


And So They Fade Away...

by Lsusanna



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Apologies, Christianity, Everybody Dies, F/M, Genderbending, I don't know where my mind goes sometimes, I'm Sorry, SO SORRY, Warning: attempted suicide, that's it and that's all, the Chitauri made Loki do it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 08:10:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1420966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lsusanna/pseuds/Lsusanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which everybody dies. Joss Whedon would be proud.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And So They Fade Away...

**Author's Note:**

> So... Heh. I'm sorry.

Alexi was the first to go.

 

The team of SHIELD agents sent to defuse the bomb hadn’t made it in time, and the building had collapsed. He was caught in a small pocket of space under the rubble, along with Clair, waiting for the rescue team to come and get them. Alexi knew he didn’t have that much time. A concrete support beam had fallen on him, and he knew it had caused internal damage. He could already taste the blood. Clair was talking to Phil on her comm unit, but he couldn’t make out the words. He heard a shuffle of movement, and felt Clair’s fingers bury themselves in his hair.

 

“Hey.” She whispered.

 

Alexi tried to respond, but choked on the blood pooling in his throat.

 

“Shh, don’t try to talk.” Clair resumed speaking into the comm. When the exchange ended, she said, “Phil says the rescue team arrived. They don’t know how long it’ll take to get us out, but they’re working on it.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

“You’ll be okay, Lex.”

 

The hours crawled slowly by, Phil giving them occasional updates on the status of the rescue team. They did not speak much, both were too tired to be anything but monosyllabic, but Clair’s fingers never stopped their methodical dance through his hair. It was soothing; it kept Alexi from dwelling on the pain, or getting too desperate when the pooling blood threatened to suffocate him. After an interminable amount of time Clair spoke,

 

“How you feeling?”

 

“….Good.” He didn’t hurt anymore, that was a bad sign. Alexi was silent for a moment, he wasn’t sure how to word his question, or if he should even ask. The fog that had descended over his mind was no help…

 

“Do you think it’s true?”

 

“What’s true, Lex?”

 

“I went to church with Steve once, and the pastor was talking about forgiveness. He said that as long as you were sorry, God would forgive you, no matter what you had done. I just…I’m just wondering if that’s true.”

 

He just felt so guilty about the lives he had taken before he came to SHIELD, so beyond forgiveness…

 

It took Clair a moment to respond, “Yeah, I think that’s true.”

 

“You don’t think there’s a line?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Like a line you can’t cross, a limit to how many things can be forgiven, even if you are sorry.”

 

“No, I don’t think there is a line. And even if there is, I mean, God is…God. He _created_ good and evil. If there was a line, I don’t think any human would be able to cross it. Besides, you are not a bad person. What the Room made you do is not your fault.”

 

Alexi looked into her grey eyes, “You really believe that?”

 

“Yeah, I do.”

 

Silence took over once again. Maybe Clair was right. Maybe God would forgive….

 

Alexi felt himself losing consciousness, not for the first time. However, he didn’t try stop himself, he let himself drift into a world of soft darkness. After what could have been five minutes or five hours, the dark nothingness began to lighten, and he could make out hazy shapes that were slowly solidifying and becoming more detailed. A scene was unfolding before him, one that was unrecognizable yet felt vaguely familiar.

 

Alexi was looking out at a small kitchen through the eyes of a young child, watching a woman with soft auburn curls go about her business. She turned to him and smiled warmly, lovingly. Alexi then realized where he was.

 

After Clair recruited him into SHIELD, one of the first things Fury ordered was a complete de-brainwashing. The SHIELD psych department was supposed to pick apart his mind in an effort to remove the influence of the Red Room. The entire process had taken ten months, and then another four were spent convincing his psychiatrist that he had made it through the procedure without losing his sanity. SHIELD had uncovered many things; all of his training, most of his assignments. But they had never been able to access the memories of the first four years of his life, before the Red Room found him. No matter how many times the SHIELD psych department hypnotized him, or analyzed him, or preformed any number of procedures; all Alexi could ever remember of his home was a hazy image of a faceless woman standing in front of a window.

 

But now, he remembered it all. His parents, his Grandmother, all the cousins and extended family that came one Christmas, the dog, his favorite pillow; everything, no matter how trivial, he remembered. He drifted through the memories for an immeasurable amount of time, until he came to the image that had been his only recollection of his family for so many years. Only now, instead of a fuzzy image with no detail, Alexi could clearly see the face of his mother, and the way the light of the window cast a golden light on her hair. She crouched in front of where he was sitting on the floor, and smiled warmly. Then, the light in the window intensified, and crept over everything like fog. The image of the kitchen faded, and the light brightened, until everything was white.

 

****

 

It took many more hours before the rescue team finally dug them out and lifted the beam from Alexi Romanov’s now unconscious body. He coded on the way to the helicopter, and twice more on the way to the hospital. The second time, they were not able to revive him.

 

 

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** 

 

 

Clair took Alexi’s death very hard. She couldn’t quite believe it at first, she and her partner had survived so many things; Clair had always been aware of the very real possibility that one of them would die in the field, but still…

After she finally got over her denial, all that was left was pain. And emptiness, and loneliness, and a menagerie of other emotions she couldn’t define but nevertheless left her struggling to draw breath. Then, for some reason, Clair started to think about religion. God had seemed to give Lex some measure of peace. She could use some peace….

 

Clair found herself one Sunday sitting in the back of a church, lost in thought. The service had ended a long time ago, and the building was now empty, but she just sat, thinking about everything, though her mind felt empty.

 

A man sat down beside her; Clair recognized him as the man who had delivered the sermon, the pastor.

 

She didn’t really acknowledge his presence, they just sat together in silence, and his presence

was somehow comforting…it reminded her of Lex. Tears started falling quietly down her face. The pastor put a hand on her shoulder and asked softly,

 

“Are you looking for something?”

 

Clair didn’t respond for a long while. She hadn’t spoken to anyone in a month; she hadn’t been able to. She looked to the man; she had done her fair share of bad things, forgiveness didn’t seem like such a bad idea. It would be nice to have Someone finally wash the blood off her hands she never could.

 

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

 

****

 

It happened quickly. The Avengers were battling a large group of HYDRA operatives. The team was winning, and had cut the number of agents nearly in half, when a missile sped towards her. It was meant for Hulk, who had been responsible for the demise of most of the HYDRA agents. However, whoever had sent the missile their way had poor aim; it careened into the bridge she and Hulk were on, opening a huge hole in the middle of the structure. Something wrapped around Clair’s ankle, and dragged her down into the water below. Whatever she was attached to was incredibly heavy, and she sank rapidly. Clair couldn’t free herself, no matter how hard she struggled. Her lungs screamed, she couldn’t go without oxygen much longer. Water entered her lungs, and she desperately tried to breathe, she needed to _breathe_.

 

Everything went black. Then things started to lighten; there was still nothing, but it was a bright nothing. As Clair Barton’s world got brighter, her pain lessened, and the animal part of her stopped struggling to survive. She couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t need to.

 

 

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** 

 

 

Bruce departed from the world unceremoniously, if painfully.

 

They had just returned to the Tower, after a particularly exasperating battle. He didn’t remember much; Bruce didn’t usually remember more than flashes of the times the Other Guy took over. He did remember being particularly enraged, he learned afterwards that the enemy the Avengers had been fighting had tried, and almost succeeded, to kill Tony and Steve simultaneously.

Bruce felt differently than he usually did after a transformation; exhausted, but jittery, as if he had consumed too much coffee. His pulse racing, he staggered a few yards, not entirely sure where he was going. Suddenly, Bruce felt a searing, burning pain erupt in his chest. He cried out and dropped to the floor, his legs no longer able to support his weight. The burning sensation spread until it seemed as if every inch of his body had been submerged in acid. Bruce lay on the floor, writhing in pain, until he could no longer move. The pain was consuming, but there was still a small part of his mind able to focus on something other than the torture his body was experiencing.

 

Bruce thought of the people he loved. Their faces flashed in his mind, like pictures in a rapid slideshow. He had already made his peace with God, asked his forgiveness; he prayed now to be taken quickly. If he was going to die, he wanted to go already; he couldn’t take the pain, please, God, just take away the pain…

 

Then Bruce was no longer capable of thought, and everything was dark, and painful.

 

But then there was no pain; and Bruce Banner felt as if he was floating, almost like that light feeling one gets before one falls asleep. And then, in a way, he did.

 

The Gamma Radiation had finally taken its toll.

 

 

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** 

 

 

Tony went to a dark place after Pepper died. They were both getting on in years, he supposed he should have prepared himself for it, but still, she was only in her _sixties._ It had been so sudden, too, a heart attack; and Tony blamed himself. Pepper had always been a healthy person, the only explanation was stress; something he had given her a lot of over the years. He should have let her go when he had the chance, let her go off and have a normal life with someone…but he had loved her too much, he had been selfish.

 

He tried to get over it, and keep going, but he was starting to notice how _empty_ the Tower had become. It was just him and Steve now; Thor hadn’t come back to Midgard much after Jane passed away, and everyone else was dead. The lab still felt too empty, and even now, he sometimes expected to see Bruce there, focusing intently on a microscope. His breath still caught whenever he saw Clair’s ‘nest’ in the rafters above the common room; no one had ever had the heart to take down the pile of blankets in which the archer had spent so much time… He had slept on the couch in the common room since Pepper died, Tony just couldn’t bring himself to sleep in the bedroom, alone. Tony had possessed an empty space in his heart for a long time now, which used to be filled by Jane, and Clair, and Alexi, and Bruce, and Thor, and many others. Pepper’s passing had widened it to a gaping hole, and no Arc Reactor could help him now.

 

So he decided to end it.

Tony muted JARVIS, and downed a bottle of ibuprofen. Steve had found him lying on the floor of his bedroom, the bottle of scotch still in his hand.

 

Tony considered that his rock bottom. After that, it was a slow, grueling, painful, arduous journey back up. Somewhere along that journey, Steve started dragging him to church on Sundays, under the pretence of not wanting to leave him alone in the Tower. Tony supposed that was true, in part, but he got the feeling that Steve was just trying to get his soul saved, or some such nonsense.

  

Despite himself, after a while, Tony started to listen to the sermons, instead of just playing on his StarkPad.  And, after a while, Tony found himself staying late one Sunday to talk to the pastor. He was a very well read man, an intelligent theologian; and Tony, a life-long atheist and intellectual, found his arguments surprisingly convincing.

 

When Tony finally made it back to the tower, it was late in the day. He walked into the kitchen, intending to make some coffee. He found Steve already there, sitting at the table, waiting. Tony did not acknowledge his presence, and busied himself making the coffee. He could feel Steve’s eyes on him.

 

Tony turned to the blonde-haired super-soldier, who, despite being a little over a century old by now, still looked to be in his twenties. “What?” Tony spat.

 

Steve said nothing, only raised an eyebrow. Tony turned back to the coffee machine, resuming studiously ignoring the man sitting behind him. Tony succeeded for a few minutes, before turning to him again. He was happy with the choice he had made; Tony just hated it when Steve was right.

 

“You know what? Fine. Fine! Fine. You really want to know what I did today? I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Okay? Is your mission complete now, Capsicle? Are you happy?”

 

Steve regarded him for a moment, before getting up and making his way to where Tony was standing. Putting a hand on Tony’s shoulder, he responded, “Yes.”

 

Steve walked out of the kitchen, a smile playing about his lips, leaving a chagrined Tony standing in the kitchen.

 

****

 

Iron Man and Captain America had been sent to deal with the aftermath of a science experiment gone wrong. Apparently, a group of scientists had been toying with a new design. It was something to do with gravity, Tony didn’t know exactly what it was supposed to do, he hadn’t had a chance to examine it yet; all he knew was that it had levitated the building it was in. He and Steve, with the help of SHIELD, had managed to evacuate the building. They were deliberating the safest way to approach the machine and get the building back on the ground, when it malfunctioned, again.

 

Tony heard a deep hum, and saw a shiver run down the building. A blinding flash of bluish-white light exploded from the floor the machine was on, and the force of the explosion reduced the building to large blocks of rubble.

 

Tony dodged falling blocks of concrete, trying to weave his way out of the line of fire. Steve was yelling something he couldn’t understand, and JARVIS was going crazy. A piece of the building clipped Tony on the shoulder, and left him floundering in the air, trying to regain his balance. Before he could, a large, flat portion of the roof smashed down on the suit, pushing him down. Tony was falling too fast to fly out from under the rubble, and watched as the ground came rushing up to meet him. Tony hit the ground with Pepper’s name on his lips, and the world rapidly changed colors to an empty black, before flashing to a harsh white.

 

****

 

The slab of concrete smashed Tony Stark and his iron suit into the ground, like a bug in its exoskeleton. He died on impact.

 

 

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** 

 

 

Loki came to God during the time she spent on Midgard with Thor and the Avengers, when she was hiding from Odin. Not really hiding, he knew she was there, she just didn’t feel up to facing her ‘father’ yet, or explaining what had happened with the Chitauri, what the Other made her do. She was left shattered by that experience, and for a long while focused solely on regaining some semblance of control. Loki found the notion of unprejudiced forgiveness comforting; because she desperately wanted forgiveness, and certainly didn’t deserve it. Eventually, she went back to Asgard, and mended fences. She alternated between her home and Midgard, coming back to Earth whenever Thor did.

 

When Jane passed away, Thor couldn’t bring himself to come back to Midgard, so neither did she. Which was perfectly fine; Thor was the only person Loki really loved anymore, and she would go where he went.

 

****

 

Loki finally died in every way she had feared.

 

The Chitauri had finally found a way to take her back. They had renewed their old tortures with vigorous ferocity; because she was expendable, they no longer needed her, and no longer cared if she died. She had not, for some reason. Life had clung to her like a disease. Eventually, Loki was reduced to a shaking, whimpering figure huddled in a dark corner; the Chitauri no longer bothering her, as she needed no torture beyond the ones that were playing out in her mind, like an evil, black ink swirling in a deep pool of water. They had finally driven her beyond the brink of sanity, and there could be no going back.

 

When the Chitauri had finally had enough of reveling in her insanity, they slit her throat. And she died, alone, her blood pooling on the cold stone floor.

 

 

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** 

 

 

It was 2072 when Steve Rogers died, at the age of 154. He had gone on for an impossibly long time, still looking as young as he had when the plane went down.

 

As Steve lay on the ground, feeling the warmth of his own blood on his scalp, he knew this was it. Which was fine. The world didn’t really need Captain America, and Steve had formed a new team, so the Earth wasn’t left unprotected. He had done his duty. And he was ready. He had been alone since Tony died, and was so unbearably lonely. He missed all the people he had come to love so much, so much…. He had tried to live the best way he knew how. There was too much blood on his hands, but he had always tried to protect people, hadn’t he? Steve had asked his forgiveness, and was at peace. And this wasn’t such a bad way to go, really. He didn’t hurt; he couldn’t really think straight, and the world looked fuzzy, but there was no pain…which was nice. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore, though, which was disconcerting. The world got brighter, and yet darker at the same time, and Steve closed his eyes; this wasn’t so bad…

 

He woke what felt like seconds later, in a shapeless…place. It was bright, but soft, and not painful on the eyes. He felt a hand brush the hair out of his eyes. Startled, he half-sat up, propping himself up on his elbows.

 

“Hello, sweetheart.”

 

Steve looked disbelievingly up into the smiling face of his mother, her warm blue eyes looking into his. Her smile widened, and she pulled him into a tight hug, something he had missed so much in the last few decades.

 

“I’m so proud of you, Steven.” That was something he had wondered since he was sixteen.

 

Sarah Rogers pulled her son to his feet, and led him into the nothingness. Steve didn’t know where he was going, but knew it was somewhere he was supposed to go. And he couldn’t see them, but he could _feel_ them, the people he had lost over the long years, the people he loved. He could feel them somewhere close.

 

And he didn’t know where he was going, but he knew he was going Home.

 

 

**********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

 

 

Thor lived a long life. Long, even, by the standards of Asgard. He started Believing after Jane died, because she had, and it seemed to fulfill her. For a time, he was not happy, but not quite sad either. He had his sister, and he missed Jane, but he had always known he would outlive her. Things changed when Loki was taken by the Chitauri.

 

And so, Thor lived a long life, long even, by the standards of Asgard; plagued by memories of his dead friends and loved ones. Of arriving on the drifting rocks too late, of wailing as he carried the broken body of his sister to the Bifrost, her blood smearing on his breastplate.

 

****

 

When Thor died, he was old and grey. As the king of Asgard, it was his duty to protect his realm. So when the Midgard Serpent threatened the safety of his kingdom, he sought to eliminate the threat. Thor succeeded in his mission, but not before inhaling the Serpent’s noxious breath. Thor the Thunderer gasped his last breath, but he was not afraid. He had lived too long already, and desired to see his friends and family again. The sky got brighter, and the world faded.

 

And so it happened that the king of Asgard departed from the world.


End file.
